Battery setup for a Leeson Motor

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mike_c01
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Battery setup for a Leeson Motor

Hi all,

I have a brushless 3 hp leeson motor, 3000 rpm, 36VDC, 86 amps and 84lbs of torque. I will be using this for a scooter. I was wondering if anyone could suggest an ideal battery arrangment, series or parallel, and brand name of battery. I will likely be going with nicad or lead acids to keep costs down. Required run time is only about a half hour.

Many Thanks,

Mike

LinkOfHyrule
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Re: Battery setup for a Leeson Motor

Hmm. That's a fairly powerful motor you have there, so even even running it for that half hour is going to eat up quite a bit of energy.

It's 36V, so naturally you're going to need 3 12V batteries in series (if you go with lead) or 30 1.2V batteries in series (if you go with NiCD). If I were you, I'd go with NiMH. I havn't looked up NiMH prices for a while, but while they're more expensive than lead-acid, they're about the same, if not cheaper, than NiCD, and will probably last longer.

What kind of scooter are you planning to put it in? You're going to need a lot of space for those batteries.
It's pretty hard to figure out how far you're going to be able to go without any real-world testing, but (if I had to make a very rough estimate), to get 30 minutes of runtime out of it (and maybe a little extra, because you might need it), you're going to need around 60AH of lead. I think the XM-2000 (similar wattage motor) uses a 60V string of 27AH batteries and got around 30 minutes of runtime. The pack weighed well over 100lbs, if I remember correctly. If you do go with lead, make sure they're proper deep-cycle ones with solid plates.

If you have the cash, go with NiMH. They're lighter and smaller, but therefore pricier. If you go with NiMH, you could probably get away with around 40AH of battery. Mind, though, that you're going to need to put several strings in parallel to get that rating. And some sort of BMS (battery management system) to keep them from going into reversal and dying in their infancy. On the other hand, they have a much higher cycle life when compared to lead-acid, so may actually be cheaper in the long run.

Remember: Range is greatly dependant on how hard you ride. You're going to get a substantial range increase if you ride at 30MPH instead of 40. Hilly areas, wind direction and speed, road conditions, and temperature are all going to affect your range, too.

As for brand of battery, I'm not even going to go there. Might start a brawl. :p

The author of this post isn't responsible for any injury, disability or dismemberment, death, financial loss, illness, addiction, hereditary disease, or any other undesirable consequence or general misfortune resulting from use of the "information" contai

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